Title: Instrumentalism and the Ethics of Videogame Play: The Tactical Iraqi Controversy
1Instrumentalism and the Ethics of Videogame Play
The Tactical Iraqi Controversy
- Elizabeth Losh,
- University of California, Irvine
2Competing Positions on Ethics
- Games
- are sites that model communicative exchanges
- provide tools that allow learners, patients, or
other disenfranchised individuals to realize
intended personal or group objectives - represent a pragmatic strategy of negotiation
with a less than ideal world - foster exploring institutional environments and
testing the architecture of boundaries - are stages for persuasive political rhetoric
- are virtual environments that function as
ideological deceptions - are visual representations of public deliberation
3Tactical Iraqi
4A Pre-History of Tactical Iraqi
The Center for Advanced Research in Technology
for Education (CARTE) at the Information
Sciences Institute of the University of Southern
California previously authored a range of
imaginative but seemingly disconnected distance
learning initiatives that featured computer
generated animated agents, software capable of
expressive speech analysis and synthesis, and
programs organized around the presentation of
pedagogical drama.
5Mission Game
6Skill Builder
7Arcade Game
8What are the core problems that Tactical Iraqi is
designed to solve?
- A chronic shortage of Arabic speakers among
military personnel - A combat environment in ambiguous urban warfare
settings of occupation and reconstruction - A resistance to classroom language instruction in
the planned population of learners
9Social and Perceptual Realism
What common rituals make us more likely to
identify a given situation as realistic? Alison
McMahan How does the agora function in digital
spaces?
(The agora is the environmental bubble in which
social exchange and mutual appropriation is
permissible according to Ostwald.)
10A Pre-History of Embodied Language Learning
Georgi Lozanov Suggestology and Suggestopedia
11Constraining Transgressive Play
- James Paul Gee has argued that there are
pedagogical benefits to challenging the norms of
explicit instruction in situated learning
contexts. - Yet military videogames generally punish
transgressive play and limit exploration of the
virtual environment, to such an extent that human
subjects at first avoided the game space of
Tactical Iraqi entirely or cheated to reach the
ostensible rewarded objective.
12The Commercial Market for Language-Learning
Software
The Living Language series models norms of
politeness in which interactions are highly
regulated and proprietary rights to the physical
space is not contested.
13Knock and Talk Missions
- How do soldiers learn to follow very different
rhetorical rules? - How is personal space negotiated?
- How do strategies and tactics differ?
- Is there a role for politeness?
14Positive and Negative Face
-
- Brown and Levinson recommend negative
politeness as the safer course. - Negative politeness is generally the less
risky strategy than positive politeness -
- It is safer to assume that H prefers his
peace and self-determination than he prefers your
expressions of regard. - Yet military missions may necessarily
constrain the spatial freedom of others during
interrogation, quarantine, search, or arrest. -
15 -
- Exactly who is being persuaded when we talk
about persuasive games? -
- Are there lay audiences watching as well as
professional ones? -
- Are there domestic audiences listening as well
as international ones? -
-
- What cultural narratives are re-enforced by
- creating media spectacles around these games?
-
16Stuart Moulthrop
- The declaration (or acclamation) of war may
distract attention from preexisting conflicts
inherent in information culture.
17The First Great Debate
- Mimesis games imitate real life and in turn
encourage players to act in the real world in
ways that imitate game play. - Catharis games provide a socially acceptable
outlet for experiencing destructive behavior and
help players understand the consequences of
anti-social actions.
18The Second Great Debate
- Narratology games tell stories that are
organized by structural elements in a plot line
in which players identify with particular
characters - Ludology games subvert cultural narratives
because the rules allow for reciprocity and
subversive play
19A Third Great Debate?
- Instrumentalism games function as tools that
give the player enhanced abilities as an
individual to effect change in virtual or real
worlds. - Functionalism games function to maintain a
societys homeostasis and protect existing
institutions and ideological paradigms.
20Nick Montfort, on a great article . . .
The BBC article quotes Hannes on gestural
differences between U.S. and Arabic cultures,
something the program aims to point out to
trainees. There are many interesting issues
raised by Tactical Iraqi, but the game should
remind us that virtual environments dont erase
the body, and that this can make a difference in
how we use our bodies in the real world, too.
21Gonzalo Frasca Shame on you, Tactical Iraqi!
-
- They are pulling the trigger with every single
line of code they create, with every single page
of design doc they write . . . The Army money
that funds your projects is tainted with blood .
. .
22Pragmatic Responses
- Communication saves lives
- Lesser of evils arguments (verbal vs. physical
violence) - Could serve a public diplomacy purpose
- Soldiers might realize the human costs of war if
they share a language with its victims - Military vendors wont cease to be
23A Posteriori Logic
-
- There is no such thing as an ideologically
neutral piece of software. Of course, teaching a
language is a great thing. However, it does not
make sense to see Tactical Iraqi as a game
without a context. -
- It is a game to teach Arabic
- to an Army that illegally
- invaded Iraq.
24Andrew Stern Gonzalo, it's good to
hear dissenting voices about military-oriented
serious games, even about games that are
ostensibly intended to make soldiers more
educated and culturally aware.
25- Military funding (e.g. DARPA) is relatively
pervasive in computer science in general, helping
fund many researchers, including some you know.
(The project I'm consulting on is Army-funded.)
Such research, like the interactive narrative
research I'm working on for ICT, can be applied
to many other domains.
26 - Personally, right now, working for the US
military and thinking that it could be a good
thing, given its recent and not-so-recent record,
I consider that naive. - I told you before to stay away
- from narratologists . . .
27Among the more pacifist folks I know, one of
the strategies for dealing with the ethical
issues DARPA and other military funding raise is
to think of such research as subversive they'll
take the military funding and use the resulting
research for initiatives that undermine the
military. Ian Bogost
28- In this global world, it's always hard to
know who is behind who, and what is connected to
what. It's almost impossible to predict the
network of consequences of your actions. When I
work for a client I set my limits on the
foreseeable consequences. Let's say that I try to
take a sincere to the best of my knowledge.
29Andrew Stern
- Ideally of course, the military uses such
research in morally acceptable ways, as I hope my
contribution would be e.g. cultural education.
Naive? Well the truth is, the interactive
narrative research I'm doing is somewhat general,
and I would want to be working on similar work
even if it weren't military funded, and would
want to make the technology available for
license the military would then be free to just
license that directly.
30Hannes Vilhjálmsson, speaking as a peace
activist myself
- 1) When I met in person a group of soldiers that
had just returned from duty in Iraq I was struck
by their awareness of the mess they were in and
their desperation to get out of there alive - and
to them, being able to make friends not enemies
was absolutely crucial for their own survival. - 2) The game rewards non-violence over violence -
in fact, you fail the game immediately if things
start to take a violent turn.
31 - A journalist recently asked me so, you work
on identifying persuasion techniques in
videogames. What if your research falls into the
wrong hands? It is a valid question. Whoever
develops tools will face this dilemma and have to
live with it. However, I think there is a
difference between developing X that could be
used for harm by A and helping A so they can
use X. In the first case, it's A's moral
responsibility the one that is at stake. In the
second it is mine.
32 - Does any of the Tactical Iraqi debate get very
far outside the instrumentalist paradigm? - Frasca uses the word tool at least
- six times to explain his positions in
- the ethical debate?
- Even anti-instrumentalist Bogost uses the
term - The position that any tool that requires one
to accept the situation in Iraq explicitly
excuses the logic that brought it about.
33The Tool Approach in Action
- Voice Response Translator
34The Human Terrain
- Policy analyst Max Boot in an editorial in The
Los Angeles Times - The FlatWorld mixed reality facility at USCs ICT
-
35Virtual Tourism
- What are the effects of architectural pastiche?
- How is the area of game play constrained?
36Virtual Iraq
37 A HMD exposure therapy simulation that uses
digital assets from other ISI/ICT projects
and Full Spectrum Warrior. The object of the
simulation is to allow the patient to create
personal narratives about real-life traumatic
events that foster psychic integration rather
than the symptomology or dissociation of PTSD.
Some versions of the simulation use a motion
platform and/or scent release device.
38Telemedicine
- Rehabilitation and training in virtual
environments for amputees, spinal injury
patients, the blind, and the developmentally
disabled.
39Virtual Classroom
- Albert Skip Rizzo
- ADHD Children
40Geographies of Trauma
Virtual Bus Bombing Tamar Weiss, University
of Haifa
- Virtual World Trade Center
- Cornell and
- the University of Washington
Virtual Vietnam Jarrell Pair and researchers at
Georgia Tech
41The Spatialization of Memory in the work of Jacki
Morie
- The Memory Stairs
-
DarkCon
42The Rhetoric of WalkingMichel de Certeau
Ian Bogost, the figure of the flaneur, and the
concept of Procedural Rhetoric
43Showing pervasive problems being solved could
potentially create political spectacles
- The shortage of Arabic speakers
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among the veteran
population - The difficulty of locating improvised explosive
devices
Ambush! from BBS, another DARWARS project
44Mainstream Media Coverageof Tactical Iraqi
- Newsweek
- USA Today
- The Los Angeles Times
- The New York Times
- National Geographic
- Forbes
- BBC
- National Public Radio
- ABC News
45In what ways could you argue that Americas Army
is actually a better, more ethical game?
- It fosters certain forms of community
- 3-D characters are not racialized
- It allows for occasional protest
- Embodiment gaps invite critique of its
oppositional logic - It is possible to challenge authority despite
stern consequences
46Is there a rhetorical function to making
training, language-learning, or therapy visible
to the public?Regardless of the intentions of
their creators, are policy-makers motivated to
fund projects that show intractable problems
being tackled regardless of their efficacy?If
audiences for broadcast media in the general
public do not participate in interactive
experiences do they have any opportunity for
ideological critique?
47Slavoj iek Welcome to the Desert of the Real
- By using the film The Matrix as an analogy,
iek argues that until the attacks of September
11th, the U.S. was shielded by an artificial but
ideologically comforting socio-economic,
political, and cultural virtual reality
environment that separated it from the violence
and privation of the rest of the world.
48 - If there is any symbolism in the collapse of
the WTC towers, it is not so much the
old-fashioned notion of the center of financial
capitalism, but, rather, the notion that the two
WTC towers stood for the center of the VIRTUAL
capitalism, of financial speculations
disconnected from the sphere of material
production. The shattering impact of the bombings
can only be accounted for only against the
background of the borderline which today
separates the digitalized First World from the
Third World desert of the Real.
49 -
- Ironically, since those attacks, government
agencies have created even more VREs so that
games and simulations can safely model military
and public health situations of crisis. - In particular, a number of other Virtual Iraqs
were to have been recreated these included plans
to construct a digital replica of the looted
National Museum in Baghdad.
50Making Things Public
51Taxpayer-Funded Games as Public Property
-
- Scientific laboratories, technical
institutions, marketplaces, churches and temples,
financial trading rooms, Internet forums,
ecological disputes without forgetting the very
shape of the museum inside which we gather all
those membra disjecta are just some of the
forums and agoras in which we speak, vote,
decide, are decided upon, prove, are being
convinced. - Bruno Latour
52Acknowledgements
- My thanks to Lewis Johnson of the
Information Sciences Institute for allowing me to
interview him about this project and for access
to his published studies, game scripts, character
descriptions, and personal reflections in several
follow up e-mail exchanges. I am also very
grateful to Albert Skip Rizzo of the Institute
for Creative Technologies, who permitted an
extensive interview allowed me to use the Virtual
Iraq system twice and shared his rich archive of
digital files that demonstrate virtual reality
exposure techniques and clinical findings.
Michael Zyda of the Game Pipe Lab at USC, who
co-created Americas Army, also granted me an
extensive interview.
53My e-mail and web addresses
- lizlosh_at_uci.edu
- http//eee.uci.edu/faculty/losh
- http//www.virtualpolitik.org
- http//www.digitalrhetoric.org